Cooking Spare Ribs

Bites Nearby: Grumpy's Bar-B-Que Roadhouse

This establishment’s name says it all.

Grumpy’s is a place for barbecue and more barbecue, available in a welcoming, no-frills setting that serves up down-home entertainment as well.

Its claim to fame is all manner of barbecued meats—spare ribs, pork butts, pork loin, beef brisket, prime rib, chicken wings, chicken quarters and more—rubbed with a seasoning mix then slow cooked and smoked over a hickory wood fire for up to twelve hours. Quarter rack, half rack, and full rack spare ribs are front and center on the menu, along with pulled pork barbecue sandwiches and plates.

The Southern style of cooking (with flavors also borrowed from Cajun and Tex-Mex cuisine) appears in the hearty gumbo and chili, the breaded and fried alligator bites appetizer, the entrée of crawfish étouffée over blackened catfish, and even in the desserts of pecan pie, bread pudding and Southern banana pudding.

The restaurant, with full bar, is housed in an 1840’s tavern in a small town locals still know as Mechanicsville. It’s a few minutes north of Allentown, just inside the border of South Whitehall Township. The owners perpetuate the roadhouse feel of the place, with its rustic open beams and stone walls, by liberally decorating with auto and motorcycle memorabilia.

Tuesday nights are designated as Bike Nights, a promotion for motorcycling riding patrons. Blues and jazz jams and open mics are held on Thursdays, and Grumpy’s stays open late on Fridays and Saturdays to feature live bands. Grumpy’s offers event catering, and can bring the barbecue to you with their mobile cookers and trucks.

3000 Mauch Chunk Rd. , Allentown, PA  18104 . 610 769-4600.

 

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Cooking like a caveman, Dutch oven BBQ Spareribs | NateElston.com

There are few things more rewarding and relaxing then spending an afternoon looking out at a gorgeous view while tending to a dutch oven full of goodness.  It seems that is how this year’s installment of caveman cooking begins.  This year the challenge was not breakfast but spareribs; the only requirement I received was they had to be tender.  Mission accomplished.

Cooking in a dutch oven is not necessarily my forte, I mean it is primitive, but sadly my dutch oven is probably the least used weapon in my cooking arsenal.  Unlike the smoker, you can’t just set it and forget it (more or less), it requires constant devotion, and that presents a challenge at home when I usually do not have hours on end to babysit the pot.  Sadly.

Given the opportunity to give the dutch oven a try, I left the smoker at home and busted out the pot.  It is vacation, days are supposed to be spent doing the stuff you don’t have time to do at home like fishing, relaxing and yes, tending to a dutch oven.

To get started I had to do battle with the wind. First I dug a hole a few inches deep and a few inches wider than the dutch oven, then, grabbed the neighbors fire ring to act as a wind block.  Wind problem solved.

Next, I fired up 22 coals in the charcoal chimney and got ready to cook.  For every coal I put on the lid I put two underneath the oven in a checkerboard pattern.  From there, every 25-30 minutes, I added 6 to 8 or so fresh coals following the same distribution and rotated the oven half turn and the lid a half turn the other way.  There is a handy dutch oven temperature calculator you can find here .

After two and a half hours of this madness and the constant whiffs of amazing smells coming from the pot, it was time for phase two, the fire.  This was where we were to finish and give the ribs a nice outward texture.  While maintaining the coals on the pot, I had been building up a nice bed of cherry wood coals to finish the ribs on with a bit of BBQ sauce.

Once the ribs had taken on a nice set of grill marks and soaked up some cherry smoke, they were ready and tender!  So, when it was all said and done, there was really no recipe it was a cobbled together bit of whatever came to my mind goodness but here is my best stab at it.